1856-1922:
Aaron David Gordon

This article is part of a series of essays in Socialist Zionism written by prolific socialist Zionists.

Aaron David Gordon saw himself as a teacher. For the first forty-seven years of his life A. D. Gordon taught young people after his daily work as a manager of a farming estate in the Russian province of Podolia. Gordon was filled with a Tolstoyan mystic love of physical labour and man's relation to soil. He was a member of Hibbat Zion during those years. Little else is known of his early life.

In 1903 he went to Palestine, leaving his wife and children behind. In the vineyards and wineries of Petah Tikva he engaged, for the first time in his life in manual labour.

Gordon spent the rest of his life in Palestine preaching his gospel of manual labour. He argued that the sickness of the Jewish people could only be cured through the honest toil of workers on their own soil organised in social units. Indeed, Gordon died in Degania, the first Kibbutz,and his vision has been taken as a credo for much of the Labour Zionist movement.

Gordon's outlook and the tone of his writings capture, and was later taken to symbolise, the mood of the builders of the 1920's and 1930'S. The Chalutzim (pioneers) and the youth movements derived much of their ideological momentum from the Gordonian work ethic as a solution to the alienation and social oppression suffered by the Jewish People.

Nationalism and Socialism

Socialism was born out of the development of science and technique on the one hand, and out of capitalism on the other. It rests entirely upon technique and action, while nationalism rests upon life and creation. Socialism, therefore, is so clear, and smooth, so easily understood In all its phases, so very convenient for use in explaining everything in the life of man! This cannot be said of nationalism any more than it can be said of life itself. For this reason, socialism based the progress the regeneration of human life, upon the improvement of the social system not upon the improvement and regeneration of the human spirit. Clearly, we have a mutual, reciprocal action here; no thinking mind will deny this. But the difference lies in what we emphasise most, what we consider are essentials. Socialism has made thee external life, the objective elements of life most important, and

holds that these will improve not only life but man as well. It did not sufficiently take into account the subjective factors of man. For this very reason socialism did not concentrate upon a field of battle against capitalism among the people where the strength of labour consists not alone as an economic force, but in general, as a force in the creation of

the life of the people. The entire struggle from every angle might have been waged not merely against the exploitation of the people. For capitalism produces not what the people need most, but what will return the most profit to the capitalists. Socialism pushed the struggle to the international field, to the field and to the power of capitalist activity. By this act it robbed labour of its vital content, of its national strength and made of it a mechanical force in the wake of capital as though and this has already been said --it had no national or human account except as it served to benefit the capitalist. Not in vain was socialism based on materialism and the class struggle. This factor alone that the founders of socialism relegated all life and the entire conflict in human life to one side -shows clearly how deeply it is impregnated with technical thought. At bottom, materialism is not the objectionable feature of socialism -for there are in socialism non-materialistic factors -rather it is the mechanical element in socialism that is the objectionable consideration.

Not without purpose did the original founders of socialism definitely oppose nationalism, for they saw in it a direct contradiction to socialism. Life, however, demands a slow, imperceptible transition from socialism to nationalism in a new form adapted to the new spirit and to the new thought of our day. One may say perhaps that this is the weakness of the socialist movement: it does not consciously follow this course; rather, it aspires to the pursuit of its mechanical, partisan trends.

The Struggle Against Capital

The World War clearly demonstrated to what degree each nation was obliged to concentrate on its own country and to sustain itself through its own resources. The intelligent workers particularly should open their eyes to see that this concentration is especially needed by them if social justice is to prevail. It is not for them to follow on the heels of capital, which by its very nature is international, or non-national, and non-humanitarian; it is lot for the workers to fight capital on the international field, but to concentrate on labour which by its very nature is national, to fight capital within the confines of labour, on its national boundary.

This consideration involves a different kind of struggle. The strength of the fighters for social justice lies in the strength of labour. Herein is the focal point of the struggle. In proportion as labour produces only those things that are actually needed for the life of the entire nation, it is not capitalistic. Capital cannot control it; conversely, labour which produces what is not needed by the entire nation but only by the wealthy class, by parasites, or when labour produces instruments of warfare, which in general causes injury from any point of view, while the nation is in want of necessities, then that labour becomes capitalistic even though the labourers work on a co-operative basis and receive their full share of the returns.

Herein is the principle: the victory of social justice is bound up with the victory of national labour; the implication follows that labour should produce only what is necessary for the spiritual and economic life of the nation, and too, that everyone should work. All this depends more upon the understanding and the will of the workers and those with them than upon world markets or upon any outside governments.

The focal point of our work and purpose; as has already been pointed out, is here in Palestine and in the Jewish nation. Here at this central point, we must concentrate all our efforts, both material and spiritual, and make the work of revival and redemption one single task. This aim compels us to strive with all our might to grow closer, more at one with the nation, with the whole nation, throughout its ranks, without exception or differentiation. There are among us people who live by physical or by intellectual labour; we are with these. Then there are the parasites who live on the labour of others. We are against these elements which we fight within the nation, and as far as possible, together with the nation. We do not, of course, wage a physical fight but use decent and forceful means alike; such, for example, as the power of public opinion, the strike, and so on. We can and must seek help from all the elements of the nation. All the finest of the nation from whatever rank or class, party or sect can stand on one front with us on many matters of common interest to us both, even if on other ideas we areas far apart as the poles. Note, for instance, our major demands: labour, national ownership of the soil, and of the means of production. These can be accepted even by the most orthodox. For 'And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is Mine', is decreed by the Bible, too. Again, this is the idea behind national wealth which is also supported by the orthodox. So with labour. We understand that not everyone who can or even who is compelled to abide by these principles will do so.

From the point of view of nationalism the struggle between capital and labour is a class struggle or an economic one. It is a struggle of the nation against its parasites, a struggle of life against decay. Work is the strength of the nation; it is important for the nation not only that the worker shall eat to the full of the fruit of his labour, but also that the strength of his labour -the strength of the nation -shall not be wasted and used recklessly; that with the strength of his labour the worker shall produce what the nation as a whole needs, what in reality is needed for the creation of its life and for the spirit of its life, not what is needed only by parasites bringing about both national and human loss and ruin.

We must realize that the capitalists and, in general, al1 those who live by the labour of others, who are interested in maintaining the decayed system of the rule of the parasite over labour, make up a very small part of every nation. The others, the rest of the nation even those who do no manual work, whose economic condition is no better or worse than the average condition of workers who live by their labour -all those who make up in general, the bulk of the nation in reality have no need for the existence of a decayed order.

Labour and Nationalism

The labour movement must take on a national form. It must primarily become of direct, of concrete interest to the mass of the nation. Then, and only then, will it become a convincing force, a powerful agency for bringing the idea of the future to the nation as a whole.

From all this we may learn that the evil that besets us is rooted so deep that it demands the most careful investigation and the most radical cure.

A people that was completely divorced from nature, that during 2,000 years was imprisoned within walls, that became inured to all forms of life except to a life of labour, cannot become once again a living, natural working people without bending all its will-power toward that end. We lack the fundamental element; we lack labour, but labour by which a people becomes rooted in its soil and in its culture. To be sure, not every individual among other peoples exists by labour. Many among such peoples despise labour and search for a way of life that can maintain itself on the labour of others. But the majority of a living people works in normal fashion; work is ingrained in their lives, and so it is carried on as an organic function. A living people always possesses a great majority to whom labour is its second nature. Not so among us. We despise labour. Even among our workers there are those who work because of necessity and with the continual hope of some day escaping from it and leading 'the good life'. We must not deceive ourselves. We must realise how abnormal we are in this respect, how alien labour has become to our spirit, and not alone to the individual life, but also to the life of the nation. Quite characteristic of us is the Hebrew expression: 'When Israel does the will of the Lord, its work is done by others'. These with us are not mere words. The sentiment, whether we are aware of it or not, has become a subconscious attitude within us, a second nature to us.

A living culture embraces the whole of life. Whatever man creates for the sake of life is culture: the tilling of the soil, the building of homes, of all kinds of buildings, the paving of roads, and so on. Each piece of work, each deed, each act is an element of culture. Herein is the foundation of culture, the stuff of which it is made. Arrangement, method, shape, the way in which a thing is done -these are forms of culture. What man does, what he feels, thinks, lives, while he is at work, and while he is not working, the conditions arising from these situations, together with living nature underlying all these relations ­these mould themselves into the spirit of culture. Higher culture draws its nourishment from science, art, beliefs, and opinions, from poetry, ethics, religion. Higher culture or culture in its restrictive sense, the culture to which we especially apply the term when we speak of culture is the butter of culture in general, of culture in its broadest sense. But is it possible to make butter without milk or will man make butter from milk belonging to others, and will the butter then be his very own?

What are we seeking in Palestine? Is it not that which we can never find elsewhere -the fresh milk of a healthy people's culture? What we are come to create at present is not the cultu re of the academy, before we have anything else, but a culture of life, of which the culture of the academy is only one element. We seek to create a vital culture out of which the cream of a higher culture can easily be evolved. We intend to create creeds and ideologies, art and poetry, and ethics and religion, all growing out of a healthy life and intimately related to it; we shall therefore have created healthy human relationships and living links that bind the present to the past. What we seek to create here is life -our own life -in our own spirit and in our own way. Let me put it more bluntly: In Palestine we must do with our own hands all the things that make up the sum total of life. We must ourselves do all the work, from the least strenuous, cleanest, and most sophisticated, to the dirtiest and most difficult. In our own way, we must feel what a worker feels and think what a worker thinks -then, and only then, shall we have a culture of our own, for then we shall have a life of our own.

Labour and the Worker

It all seems very clear: From now on our principal ideal must be Labour. Through no fault of our own we have been deprived of this element and we must seek a remedy. Labour is our cure. The ideal of labour must become the pivot of all our aspirations. It is the foundation upon which our national structure is to be erected. Only by making Labour, for Its own sake, our national ideal shall we be able to cure ourselves of the plague that has affected us for many generations and mend the rent between ourselves and nature. Labour is a great human ideal. It is the ideal of the future, and a great ideal can be a healing sun. .

Though the purpose of history is not, to be sure, to act the teacher, still the wise can and must learn from it. We can learn from our condition in the past and in the present, for we must now set the example for the future. We must all work with our hands.

It is all easily understood. The attitude toward work and workers among us, and in general, all our attitudes in the field of labour which lead to conflicts, and to confusions peculiar to us, what are they all but sterile and false reflections of the attitudes prevailing in the lives of those nations among whom we live? Among those nations we find a working class and a capitalist class that grants work to the labourers. Whatever relations exist between the classes are in the main economic, and the struggle between them is an economic struggle. There are those that see and desire to see such a relationship among us. This is true even of some of us who have come apparently for no materialistic alms. Everyone, however, does not see the difference; not a few there are who do not wish to see it. Those who do see it, see that the struggle between the classes among a living people is a social struggle, for employer and employee are members of one nation, whereas among us the struggle is a national one. The employers are Jews and the workers are members of different nations. But they fail to see that the struggle is also a political one. The workers are relatives; the employers are foreigners. If we do not till the soil with our very own hands, the soil will not be ours -not only not ours in a social, or in a national, but not even in a political sense. The land will not be ours and we shall not be the people of the land. Here, then, we shall also be aliens just as in the lands of the diaspora where, too there are Jews who rent land, who buy fields, gardens, orchards, and traffic in the fruit of the labour of others. It is only to the degree that we here possess settlements and farms in which the work is done wholly by us that we shall become citizens and natives of the land, We can not deceive ourselves much longer in the belief that investing money in business, parceling out work, and superintending affairs constitute the essence of labour, the essence of such national creativeness as will give us title to the land.

Nation to Nation

Truth is the basis of our world. Although truth is modest, its power is greater than all the slogans emblazoned on banners, Furthermore, the power of truth prevails not alone in the relationship of man to man but in that of nation to nation, Through the power of truth we shall find a way for a life in partnership with the Arabs, for co-operative life and work destined to become a blessing to both peoples, But truth is neither noisy nor arrogant, nor does it take up its habitation among the weak, We are in need of heroic human courage which demands lofty ideals of conduct even when the conduct of others falls below this standard; in this conduct there must be no weakness, for that bears only elements of inferiority. There is no need for us nor is it fitting for us to be submissive or arrogant in our relations with the Arabs. More for our sake than for theirs must we be men of truth and justice. Any sermonising regarding proper relationships toward the Arabs based on ulterior motives should have no place among us. We are bound to maintain worthy and just relations toward all. If others pursue a different course, that of the mailed fist or of falsehood, they can surely harm us but they cannot swerve us from our purpose; nor shall we of ourselves change our course. The greatest harm will rebound upon themselves.

Herein is the basic solution of the problem between ourselves and the Arabs. The Arabs live on the land; we cannot deprive them of their rights but neither can they deprive us of our rights to the land on which we live and labour. True, we are the minority, but the land we bought and redeemed by our own work belongs to us. No majority can invalidate our title to it or take from us what is ours by right of our labour and of our creative powers. How treat the question of expansion? Of the two peoples, which has the greater right to enlarge its holdings on land that has not been acquired by work and redemption? Quantity is not the main factor here; we are concerned rather with quality, with life, growth, with self-sacrifice. Whoever works harder, creates more, gives more of his spirit, will acquire a greater moral right and deeper vital interest in the land. This is peaceful competition, Our right to this reasonable form of competition we derive from our historic title to the land. In this we shall be strengthened by the added numbers of our people throughout the diaspora.

Nation and Land

At this point it is worth while to refute a seemingly valid claim sometimes earnestly brought forward even by our own people. Advocates of this stamp hold that when we come to Palestine to settle upon the land we are dispossessing Arabs who are actual masters of the land through conquest -not over us. But what does the term mean: masters of the land? If mastery of the land implies political mastery, then the Arabs long ago have forfeited their title. Turks ruled the country for centuries and now the British are its rulers. If we bar the rights acquired through living on the land and working it, the Arabs, like ourselves, have no other than a historic claim to the land, except that our claim beyond question is the stronger; it cannot therefore be said that we are taking the land from the Arabs. As for rights accruing from occupation and from work upon the land, we too live and work upon it. Between us and the Arabs the real difference is based on numbers not on the character of our claim.

There is no distinction in the nature of the rights involved.

We are, however, bound to take the utmost care in our relations toward the Arabs. In buying land, for example, there must be no infringement upon the human rights of the Arabs nor any dispossession, of those who actually are working on the land. Rather than wrong them in any way we must be ready to pay two, three, or, indeed, many times the value of the land in order to compensate the real owners fully, those who live and those who work upon the land. If we have a special need of their land and even if we have to make other provisions for such holders, even if we have to satisfy them with returns of all sorts which may involve great difficulties and irritations, as for instance, to give them land in another section, and so on, all this we must do rather than infringe in the slightest degree upon their rights. There is no limit to the value of the land for us, it is worth all that it may cost.

As we are absorbed in the country both as settlers upon the land and as workers creating industry, creating culture, the course of our action will gradually grow clearer. The vital, human relationship between us and the Arabs will be determined by life itself and the forces of existence. To the degree that we establish in the land a more human life, that we recreate ourselves as individuals and as a people, to that degree will the Arabs around us rise to higher levels of life and of human association. There will then be founded, too, a human attitude between us and the Arab people, until such time, all their propaganda, their attacks of words or of physical violence, of murder and of destruction will not avail them against the life force we are creating. Life is stronger than any destructive force of life. Our strength lies in creative action; upon it we base our right to the land, now as ever; this is the justice of our claim upon the land. Nor should this our strength, or this our right be minimized by ourselves or by others. Our claim to the land rests on whatever the land or its life gains through our labour.

Having taken this stand, we should not permit our attention to be distracted from the main theme, the Arab question in all its scope. This must be especially emphasized.

Jews and Arabs

There is one phase of Arab attitudes towards us which we have failed to evaluate properly, to which we have not paid serious enough attention -namely, the declaration and the insistence thereon that the rights of the Arabs to Palestine come from the fact that Palestine is their national home.

The Arabs have the attributes and qualities of a living nation but not of a free people. They live on the land; they till the soil; they speak a national language inherently their own, and so on. Their claim is therefore, marked by the form and the significance of a demand made

by a living people -regardless of the fact that the demand is neither beautiful nor cultural in the manner by which it is expressed.

Again, seemingly there is nothing lacking in the validity of the claim. Life speaks here for itself, acts, and generates action of itself. While we discuss whether there is or is not an Arab national movement, life actively moves it forward. Since it has all favourable conditions for its development, the movement grows and expands. We run ourselves into serious danger if we fail to recognise this vital fact, if we deceive ourselves into the belief that it is all merely the scheme of a few effendis and nothing more. While it is true that the leaders, the main sponsors of the movement, are the effendis and the Arab intellectuals in general, they do not make up the entire movement, nor do they form its backbone. Does not their movement follow the course of every other movement be it national or otherwise? They delude themselves and us who wish to persuade us that the Arab masses, especially the Arab working masses, are or will be on our side and against the effendis. Such men overlook the fact that the Arab mass is not a detached body to be likened to our own proletarians who call themselves the masses. The Arab mass is part and parcel of a living people. On the other hand, the leaders of the Arab movement are beginning to grasp the meaning of a national movement and the task that confronts them. They always make their demands in the name of the Arab Nation, and conversely, on all occasions speak against Zionists and the Zionist organisation. The Jewish nation is never mentioned. It would not be so easy to waive the claims of Jews to Palestine if their demands were made in the name of the Jewish nation.